"Slay the Spire 2 has taken over his life":  Palworld CEO gets a telling off from staff after staying up "all night" to play the long-awaited follow-up to Mega Crit's influential deckbuilding roguelike

Slay the Spire 2 – the long-awaited sequel to developer Mega Crit's beloved deckbuilding roguelike – is just as good as we all hoped, which is proving to be great news or awful news depending on who you ask over at Palworld studio Pocketpair.

Over the weekend, Slay the Spire 2 entered Steam's top 20 most-played games ever with over 573,000 concurrent players. One of those players was likely Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe, who has already been scolded for his love of the game.

Over the weekend, the Palworld chief shared a Slack exchange with Pocketpair's publishing manager, John 'Bucky' Buckley. If you're wondering what they could be talking about, Bucky has been kind enough to give you a glimpse.

"Yes, I scolded my ceo but in my defense…we had A LOT of work to do that day and instead he stayed up all night playing Slay the Spire 2," Bucky says. "Next time I'm confiscating his Steam Deck."

Did Bucky's warning work? No, of course not.

As per Bucky himself, Mizobe did turn up to the office for work, only to find a nice wee corner for himself to keep the deckbuilding roguelike momentum going. "Slay the Spire 2 has taken over his life."

Mind you, I doubt Bucky is truly surprised by it all. Last week, the chatty Palworld community lead said he was "genuinely surprised" by how many people on Twitter were shocked to see Slay the Spire 2 dominating the Steam charts.

"This was never up for discussion," he said at the time. " It was written in the stars. Slay the Spire is an all-time masterpiece. The gamers have been activated."

Unfortunately, it would appear that Mizobe agrees.

Slay the Spire 2 has a "very worrying" OP character, and one player with over 10,000 hours in the original is certain Silent's "numbers need tweaking."